“Our hearts are heavy with the news of the death of Sherrell Faulkner. North Carolina’s LGBTQ community and everyone at Equality NC’s thoughts are with the victim of this tragic violence,” Ames Simmons, director of transgender policy at Equality North Carolina, said in a statement. “We are facing a national epidemic of violence with eleven trans people, many of them transgender people of color, murdered in 2017. We are asking leaders and community members at every level to consider both the overt and underlying reasons for these killings. We must address the root causes of violence against our community, and we cannot rest until the violence stops.”

At the time of the attack, North Carolina’s anti-LGBTQ law House Bill 2 (HB2), requiring transgender people to use bathrooms matching the gender on their birth certificates and nullifying non-discrimination ordinances passed by cities in the state, was still on the books.